


Endless Moments 3: Dream

by FayJay



Series: Endless Moments [4]
Category: Firefly, The Sandman
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-10
Updated: 2009-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:33:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Kaylee dreams</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endless Moments 3: Dream

It's real shiny, this place. She likes it best of all.

Kaylee has a whole slew of different worlds bottled up in her head like candy in a jar, and her dreams can take her all kinds of different places. Lot of times this involves pretty boys in fancy waistcoats bringing her fresh-grown hothouse flowers – lotuses, or lilies, or orchids, like she's seen on the vids – or else feeding her strawberries or sticky rice with slivers of mango bright and wet and slippery as goldfish, while she reclines on froofy pillows on one of those fancy loveseats. Then the pretty boys might maybe lose their waistcoats, and their fine, clean shirts, and their tight, tight pants, and then it might be their skins that get all wet and slippery, and their perfect teeth bright as they bite down on her flesh and make her giggle.

Kaylee's plenty fond of that kind of dream.

Sometimes there might be more than one boy, 'cause Kaylee's a woman of healthy appetites, and she's got energy and enthusiasm enough to go round. Couple of times it was the Captain, and, boy, did she ever feel blushful when she handed him his tea at dinner the next day. She's had dreams about Inara too, a time or two, with her fine dresses and her knowing smile, but although she's curious, and game for anything, Kaylee would really rather _be _Inara than lie with her. She loves the thought of moving slow and graceful like that, in a drift of scent. Loves the idea that men might have to stop in mid-chatter, or pause in mid-step, and turn their heads to watch her walk past, lovely and dignified and utterly desirable in her silk and velvet. But Kaylee knows, even in her dreams, that she could no more be Inara than she could turn into a horse.

Lot of times, she dreams about Simon. For a long while she didn't quite dare dream about doing anything that might mess up his pretty clothes, because it seemed kind of disrespectful, and, 'sides, he's so darned nice to just look at. Like something in a story book. She felt sure that she'd say something stupid, or get engine oil on his waistcoat, and his face would get that tight, disappointed look she dreads. That what-am-I-doing-here-with-this-dirty-little-hick expression. That I-should-be-talking-to-fine-ladies-and-gentlemen-right-now expression. He's not like the rest of Serenity's crew. He's – class. He's like the living, breathing embodiment of class. The finest thing Kaylee's seen outside of vids and fleeting glimpses of Inara's clients. Too good to touch, almost, like some kind of porcelain doll or spun-sugar candy that might break if you picked it up. She knows he can speak Chinese all proper, and from his name and his clothes and his money and his pretty dark eyes, she reckons he's got family in the Core – got hisself a Chinese grandpappy, maybe. Connections. Way out of the reach of Kaywinnit Lee Frye.

But he's awful pretty, and after a while she got over her shyness. Now she dreams about him all the time: dreams about watching his eyes go wide and startled as she opens up his shirt, dreams about all that fine, clean, unscarred skin. Dreams about having him up against the wall of her engine room, or on top of the dining table, or in his clean little medical room. Dreams about rolling in the grass with him like she used to do when she was a girl, or taking him on the desert floor (although she knows fine well, from experience, that _that_ only leads to sand in places a girl really doesn't want to find sand). Dreams of lying with him in the glowing aftermath, curled up in his arms on a huge, soft bed with real sheets and billowing net curtains.

She likes those dreams. Likes them a lot. But they're not her favourites.

Kaylee's favourite dreams, better than the ones with strawberries or athletic and willing young men, are the dreams of machines. The happy purr of an engine working properly, oiled and tended and sweet as a nut. Small machines, grand machines, fine old antiques and cocky young things fresh from the factory. Steel and brass and copper and ceramic. Cogs knitting neatly into place. Finding purity and simplicity and patterns in complex tangles of wires and gears and pistons and chips. Following connections, tinkering, tending, listening to the lovely mix of voices sent up by each moving part. This is Kaylee's favourite place, the place where she's most herself, self-contained and purposeful and joyous, her mind and her heart and her soul at peace. Serene.

It's most often in those dreams, those bright and angular dreams of metal and oil and sparks, that she sometimes glimpses the man. Tall, pale, his hair an explosion of shadows, his eyes like patches of the star-scattered heavens. He's nobody she knows, and if she saw a fella looked like him in her waking life she'd jump a mile, because there's strange and then there's downright unnatural. But – he belongs here. She gets that feeling, those rare times she sees him out of the corner of her eye, maybe while she's riding Simon like a pony, or when she's just figured out the source of a sad little rattling noise in the ship's engine: that this is his rightful place. And she knows about things having their natural order, about pieces sliding neatly together with a rightness, a perfection that defies the constant press of entropy. She surely wouldn't want to try peeling off _his_ rich robes and feeding him slivers of mango or sticky rice, but she feels companionable towards him, when he drifts around the edges of her dreams. She wishes he didn't so often look so sad. She's even thought about talking to him, once or twice – trying to bring a smile to that grave, pale, face – but he intimidates her more than Simon ever did, and she always falters and draws back, and sinks into embraces or machines once more. She feels him watching her – not threatening, just curious – and she hopes that he has a place that makes him feel all peaceful-like, the way her machines do her. The way Simon sometimes does. Because he surely looks like a man could use a touch of serenity – or, if not that, then somebody brave enough to feed him strawberries and make him laugh.


End file.
